This Week In Quotes: August 3 – Aug 9, 2012

(Mitt Romney) had (a fundraiser) in Israel with a bunch of diamond merchants, we don’t know the names of them. — Bob Beckel

We still have laws that encourage torture, we did not change Guantanamo, we have laws that allow the police to arrest you at any time, not having to tell you why, and take you wherever they want. This kind of capitalism is taking us to the doorstep of [a] Fourth Reich, I think. — Harry Belafonte

(Nixon) sent the Vietnam peace accord to the Senate for ratification, though he did not have to, to secure a congressional moral commitment to deter anticipated North Vietnamese violations with a resumption of bombing of the North and the Ho Chi Minh Trail. But the Democratic congressional majorities cut off all aid to South Vietnam and assured the loss of the war their party had plunged the country into, and that Nixon had largely salvaged. They knowingly doomed Indochina to communist rule, including, as was partly predictable, the millions of dead in the Cambodian Killing Fields, the massacres in the South, and among the Vietnamese Boat People. — Conrad Black

But Reid has managed to draw both his party and his president into the gutter with him. When Reid accuses the Republicans of being overly partisan, he now lacks all credibility. For a long time it’s been difficult to believe anything he says. Now, it’s impossible. As for Obama, he is tarnished by this episode. The fresh new face that promised us all a different kind of politics is suddenly looking cheesy. The soaring rhetoric that Obama used in his first campaign has come to ground in the mud of Harry Reid’s latter-day McCarthyism. — Richard Cohen

“The argument that diversity is our strength has really never been backed up by logic,” King told The Huffington Post. “It’s unity is where our strength is. Our Founding Fathers understood that. Modern-day multiculturalists are defying that. — Steve King

It’s hard to say what type of political ramifications this specific development will have, but I do think it’s an example of a broader problem. Romney consistently attempts to make up with tactics what he lacks in vision. Romney’s campaign isn’t driven by any core ideology or governing philosophy, but by responding to news cycles. It is a campaign that was perhaps best summed up by senior advisor Eric Fehrnstrom, when he proudly tweeted yesterday, “On Fox just now Romney was asked to respond to ‘RomneyHood’ charge and called it ‘Obamaloney.’” Conservatives, rest assured — Romney will not allow himself to be called a childish nickname without responding by calling Obama a childish nickname. — Philip Klein

Robin Hood was stealing from the government. Robin Hood was a Tea Party activist. Robin Hood was anti-taxes. — Rush Limbaugh

This show is serving up more old spoiled hens than a Chick-fil-A. Oh, that reminds me…F–k Chick-fil-A. — Jane Lynch

Let’s dispense with the “Romney = murderer” meme first. The warped Priorities USA ad features the claims of one Joe Soptic, a former employee at the Kansas City-based GST Steel plant. The plant went bankrupt years after Bain Capital acquired it. Soptic blames Romney for the loss of his job and health insurance — and for the subsequent death of his wife a “short time after” the plant’s closure.

But Romney stopped working for Bain in 1999. The plant closed in 2001. And Soptic’s wife died in 2006. Oh, and Soptic admitted to CNN on Tuesday afternoon that the family in fact had health insurance at the time of Soptic’s wife’s death. But it’s still all-powerful, time-traveling, omnipresent Darth Romney’s fault. — Michelle Malkin

As far as Harry Reid is concerned, listen, you might want to go down that road, I’m not going to respond to a dirty liar, who hasn’t filed a single page of tax returns himself. He complains about money but lives in the Ritz Carlton here, down the street. If this is on the agenda, I’m not going to go there. This is just a made-up issue. The fact that we’re going to spend any time talking about it is just ridiculous. — Reince Priebus

“People who are atheists, they hate God, they hate the expression of God and they are angry with the world, angry with themselves, angry with society and they take it out on innocent people who are worshipping God. Whether it’s a Sikh temple, or a Baptist church, or a Catholic church, or a Muslim mosque – whatever it is – I just abhor this kind of violence, and it’s the the kind of thing that we should do something about,” he said. “But what do you do? Well, you talk about the love of God and hope it has some impact.” — Pat Robertson

All over Montana, you can walk into a bar, a café or even a school or a courthouse and just listen for a while as people talk to each other. And you will hear somebody, before very long, say something outrageously racist. So, I decided, I can’t turn the heart of a 45-year-old redneck. — Montana’s Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer